ASP.NET Fundamentals: ASP.NET supports all Browsers

ASP.NET Fundamentals: ASP.NET supports all Browsers

One of the greatest challenges web developers face is the wide variety of browsers they need to support. Different browsers, versions, and configurations differ in their support of XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Web developers need to choose whether they should render their content according to the lowest common denominator, and whether they should add ugly hacks to deal with well-known quirks on popular browsers.

ASP.NET addresses this problem in a remarkably intelligent way. Although you can retrieve information about the client browser and its capabilities in an ASP.NET page, ASP.NET actually encourages developers to ignore these considerations and use a rich suite of web server controls. These server controls render their markup adaptively by taking the client’s capabilities into account. One example is ASP.NET’s validation controls, which use JavaScript and DHTML (Dynamic HTML) to enhance their behavior if the client supports it. Another example is the set of Ajax-enabled controls, which uses complex JavaScript routines that test browser versions and use carefully tested workarounds to ensure consistent behavior. These features are optional, but they demonstrate how intelligent controls can make the most of cutting-edge browsers without shutting out other clients. Best of all, you don’t need any extra coding work to support both types of client.